Liv brought as many of her Whitehill people back from Feic Seria as she could: Bryn Grenfell, of course, but also Emma and Kale Forester, the knights who were fit enough to travel, and even the mountain men from Gold Creek.

Half her personal guard went first, to secure the waystone at Bald Peak. There was no reason to suspect any trouble in their own territory, but Kaija insisted, and at this point Liv couldn’t very well blame her. There was a Vædic Lady somewhere out in the world, and none of them knew where Ractia was, or what she might be doing.

It was Akseli who came back across, sent over by the guards who had remained at the other waystone. He nodded to Kaija. “Secured.”

At that, Ghveris led the way onto the white stone circle, with Wren, Liv, Arjun, Miina and the rest squeezing in to surround him. The horses would have to come later: Liv regretted leaving Steria behind, even for a short while, but three or four people would have had to stand aside to allow the mare to fit on the waystone.

There had been a time, Liv reflected, as the light built around them, that she’d been shaken by the feeling of travelling by waystone. The timeless stretch of darkness in between places; the whispers at the very edge of awareness. When they’d travelled to Freeport for the first time, Amelia Trafford had said that using a waystone felt like dying.

Now, Liv moved between them, or used a Tether, so often that she hardly stopped to give the process a second thought.

Still, she couldn’t help but smile and take a deep breath when they all appeared back in the Aspen Valley. After the damp, thick heat of the Varunan jungle, the scorching, sun-baked oppression of the high desert, and the cratered ruin left behind by the fighting atop Nightfall Peak, there was nothing like the relief of coming home.

“It feels so different, doesn’t it?” Emma Forester asked, coming up on Liv’s side as everyone else piled off the waystone. “You know I’d never been out of the valley until all this. I’d always heard traders talking about how beautiful it is here, but I thought they were just trying to strike a better deal.”

“No,” Liv assured her. “There really is a difference. There’s something about the mountains and the valley, and I’ve never been anywhere else that feels just like it. It actually occurred to me that if the old gods had any taste, they would have built their great city here, instead of in Varuna.”

“I meant to catch you at your mother’s wedding,” Emma said. “But you ran out of the feast so quickly I never had a chance. And then my father and I have mostly been out scouting, all through this whole - expedition?”

Liv shrugged. “It was better that way. No one would have been able to relax with their queen in the room.”

“Well, just remember that some of us knew you back when you still carried around a rag doll and scrubbed chamber pots,” Emma said, and nudged Liv with an elbow. Through the armor, Liv could hardly feel it. “You know you can come talk to me, if you want?”

“Thank you.” Liv hesitated just a moment, and then wrapped one arm around her old friend’s waist, pulling their bodies up against each other.

There were horses kept beneath bald peak, now, just outside the shoal in a wooden barn attached to a paddock, both of which had been raised for this purpose since last Liv came through on her way to Varuna. She suspected that she had Keri to thank for that bit of foresight. The walls of a college campus were rising, as well, in limestone bricks quarried from the surrounding mountains. The various shades of near-white, with pale hints of gray or tan, were already making for beautiful buildings.

By the time enough horses had been saddled and brought for the entire party, one of the Whitehill guards had fetched Matthew, who caught Liv in a one-armed hug as soon as he’d gotten within arm’s length.

“Is it done, then?” her adopted brother asked. “Is the goddess dead?”

Liv sighed, but returned his embrace anyway. “No. She escaped, though we broke her army and captured the rift she’d been using as a base. We’ll talk more about it in Whitehill, if you can come. How’s Triss?”

“Restless, like I told you last time.” Matthew chuckled. “She’s not used to being stuck in one place like this, but once she was well enough to get out of bed here and there, it got a bit better. She’s thrown herself into taking notes on everything she can get into up there. We would have stolen Sidonie away to help, if we thought your friend Keri could get by without her.”

“Will she mind if you head back to Whitehill for a day or two?” Liv asked. “I want to talk to you and Keri, and Sidonie, and everyone else.”

Matthew took a step back, and glanced over to the waystone. “I’ll go up to let her know, and then I’ll follow behind you,” he promised. “I won’t be more than an hour or two.”

“Alright then. Give her my love,” Liv said. She watched her brother hurry over to the waystone, then approached the horse that had been prepared for her. The gelding was a Lucanian breed, rather than one of the shaggy northern horses so many of the Eld used, but he would do well enough for the quick ride back to Whitehill. She set her boot into the stirrup, took hold of the saddle, and pulled herself up.

Kaija brought her own borrowed horse up alongside Liv’s. “Sounds like Keri had a bit of trouble to deal with,” she said. “Lucanian soldiers who went bandit and camped in the mountains.”

Liv frowned. “Are we going to have problems?” she asked.

The head of her personal guard laughed. “Not from what your soldiers just told me. He must be feeling recovered – everyone agreed Keri rode out to deal with it himself, a few days back. Burned the head of the bandits himself, and rescued the people they’d taken hostage. The story’s making the rounds.”

Liv grinned, in spite of herself. Not at the death of Lucanian soldiers – even if they’d made the choice to become criminals, she would have preferred to find a way to capture them, if possible, rather than kill them. No, it was the knowledge that Keri was riding again, and not confined to Baron Henry’s old wheeled chair, that sent a rush of excitement through her.

“Well let’s go and see him, then,” she said, wheeling the gelding around to take the mine road. “It sounds like he’s got nearly as much to tell us about, as we do him.”

☙

If the ride south through the valley was a familiar one, under the warm sun of early summer and a fresh breeze, surrounded by green mountain slopes that rose up into a vast, brilliant blue sky, the ride through the streets of Whitehill was a jarring reminder of everything that had changed.

Liv hadn’t explicitly sent word ahead that she was coming, but she also wasn’t precisely subtle. Between Ghveris’s immense bulk, jogging beside the horses, and the uniform jack of plate worn by all of Liv’s new guards, blazoned with a white mountain on a blue field, they couldn’t well be mistaken for anyone else. Add to that the distinctive sight of a woman in white armor, with matching hair caught by the wind, and the people of Whitehill knew exactly who had returned home.

Before the battle at the pass, they’d wanted to know whether the Eld were coming to fight beside their own fathers, husbands and sons at the wall; now, they turned out to cheer the arrival of their new queen.

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Liv had taken the title out of a sort of cynical practicality – the idea that she trusted herself to manage the alliance between Whitehill and the Eld more than she trusted anyone else. In the days before she left for Varuna, she’d been desperate just to get enough crossed off her list that she felt comfortable leaving someone else – even someone she had a great deal of faith in, like Keri – in charge of the valley while she was gone. She hadn’t given a lot of thought to what people actually thought of her. There hadn’t been time to.

If she’d expected anything, it might have been people to scramble out of the way of horses, as Liv and her mother had once done when they were so poor they had to walk down from the Hill on market days, dodging whatever cold mud was thrown up by carriage wheels. After all, Matthew had always been the charismatic one, and she’d supplanted him.

She certainly hadn’t anticipated children would run along the sides of the streets, shouting out to her for a wave or a smile. Nor that the hard men who worked at the stockyards would pause in their labours and line up, shoulder to shoulder, to cheer her return.

Liv waved, first to the people on one side of the street, and then the people on the other, as they passed. She tried to keep a pleasant smile on her face, but was fairly certain that anyone who got a good look at her expression would be able to see just how shocked she was.

“Didn’t expect this?” Wren asked, riding close at her side.

“No. I haven’t really even done anything, yet.” Liv could see that her friend had a wide grin, and was pleased that the opportunity to tease her was clearly taking Wren’s mind off the impending meeting at the Hall of the Ancestors.

“You won a battle against invaders who would have burned their homes and their fields,” Ghveris pointed out. “People will celebrate a war hero, until you give them reason not to.”

“I’m sure I will do that eventually.” The crowds died away as they moved past the market square, up out of the Lower Banks and into the evenly paved streets of The Hill. While some of the children trailed after the riders, the wealthy merchants who populated the nicer district of the city didn’t seem nearly as inclined to set aside propriety and give a cheer.

Liv drew rein outside the door of the baker, and called out to the eldest of the children who’d run after them - a boy of perhaps twelve, with freckles and a shock of ginger hair. “What’s your name, boy?” she asked.

“Denis, Your Majesty,” he called back.

“Go inside and bring out the baker,” Liv told him. “Can you do that for me?”

The boy nodded and dashed inside, emerging a moment later with a man in a flour dusted apron who wore his facial hair in great mutton chops of wiry black hair. He had a hand-towel, which he was using to clean himself as he pushed through the door, and immediately made a rough bow upon seeing who was in the street.

“Your majesty,” the baker said, and then lifted his head. For a moment, Liv was surprised: she’d recalled an old man operating this shop. But something about the shape of this man’s nose told her the business had remained in the family.

“I believe these children deserve a treat,” Liv said, leaning down out of the saddle. “Please give each one of them a piece of marzipan, and send the bill up to the castle. In fact, you can send a basket up to the castle as well, for tonight’s meal, and add that to the sum.”

“Of course!” The man ducked his head, and then found himself mobbed by children.

Liv laughed and, with a press of her knees, pointed her gelding’s head up the street toward Castle Whitehill.

“Marzipan is terrible for their teeth,” Arjun complained.

“Do you know how often I had sweets as a child?” Liv asked her friend, and he shook his head. “Only on market days, and only then when my mother had enough coin to spare. And she was a castle cook, Arjun. She made a good wage, compared to most of the people in the Lower Banks. Their parents are worried about having enough to fill every belly in the house. Let them have something special today.”

“It’s easy to spoil them when they aren’t your own,” Kaija remarked.

Liv narrowed her eyes and fixed her captain of the guard – for, she could admit now, that’s precisely what the older woman had become – with a stare. “Kaija. Do you have children?”

“Three of them, all grown,” the other woman admitted as they rode up to the castle gates. “One’s joined to a man down south in Asuris lands. Can’t blame her, that way they get violet when they blush is gorgeous. My son’s been overseeing all the enchanting at Kelthelis, while the rest of us have been fighting gods and monsters. And my other daughter, Venla, is second mate on a ship out of Soltheris. Don’t expect that one will ever settle down.”

Liv blinked. She’d known Kaija was older than her, but she did not look old enough to have raised three children to adulthood. Liv had come to rely on her loyalty, but somehow hadn’t bothered to ask any questions about the other woman’s life until just now – and it seemed like the press of war was a poor excuse for that.

Everyone in the castle had known they were coming, of course, and the entire castle guard, as well as the servants and the students of the Mages Guild had all turned out in the courtyard to greet them. The general practice was for the city guard to send a runner the moment someone important arrived at the gates, and Liv had no doubt that was what had happened today. Her brief stop to supply the city’s children with sweets had only given the staff more time to prepare – which had been half the reason she’d done it. Well, perhaps slightly less than half.

Lia Every and Master Grenfell stood with their students, where Liv recognized Molly, Semilla, Albert and Rande. Even Aura was there, standing with an Elden man who must have been her husband, and her hands on the shoulders of two young boys.

Sidonie, Vivek Sharma, and Mistress Trafford all stood in a cluster, along with an older woman with short, gray hair and a severe Lucanian dress. Liv recognized Linnea and Olavi, as well, the soldiers from Mountain Home, but after the first glance she ignored all of them, because nothing was as important as seeing Keri standing, rather than seated in a wheeled chair.

He was using a cane, held in his left hand, to bear some of his weight, but compared to when last she’d seen him, it was as if the moon had fallen and the sun risen, turning night into day. Her friend was thinner than he’d been before the dowager queen had nearly killed him with her spell, but that was to be expected. Still, his cheeks had color again, and Keri’s smile was even. Liv felt so relieved that half his face wasn’t sagging that she was down off the horse before she’d even realized she was moving, and crossed the courtyard.

“Liv,” Keri greeted her, with a smile, and an extended arm, in the style of the Vakansa. She walked right past his hand and threw her arms around his neck, out of pure relief. His right hand came around to catch her at her back, but for just a moment he lost his balance and stumbled. They swayed there together until they found their footing.

“You look so much better,” Liv told him, unable to keep from grinning like a fool. “I worried about you, do you know that?”

“I wasn’t off to fight a goddess,” he remarked, but then Keri smiled too.

A cough came from the left, and Liv looked over to see Sidonie, one hand raised in a fist in front of her mouth. Then, she looked around the courtyard, to find that everyone who’d ridden in with her was still mounted in their saddles, and that the entirety of the Whitehill guard and staff, along with her personal guard and most of the northern Mages Guild, were simply watching her embrace Keri.

Liv felt her cheeks erupt: if she’d been made of wood, they would have caught fire in an instant. She released her hold on Keri abruptly, stepped back a pace, and let her arms fall back to her sides.

“As your regent, I very gratefully welcome you back to Whitehill,” Keri said, raising his voice in that easy way he had, filling the entire courtyard without any discernable effort. “The kitchen staff is already preparing a feast for this evening, with more than enough for everyone who’s returned.”

“Every person standing here in this courtyard has done their duty, and more,” Keri continued. “Without them I could not possibly have managed everything. What we have done well, is to their credit, not mine; and whatever has been made a mess of, I hope you will lay entirely at my feet.”

He caught Liv’s eye, and jerked his head to indicate the assembled crowd. For a moment, Liv didn’t know what Keri was getting at, and then she realized. Though she was still not particularly comfortable being the center of attention, she’d had to speak at enough strategy meetings that it felt somewhat easier to do, now. And she certainly didn’t have to fake a smile.

“Thank you all,” Liv said, turning about on her boots to make eye contact with as many people as she could manage. “Our allied army has been victorious in Varuna. I’m certain you’ll hear all the stories over a good meal tonight, but for now let me simply say thank you. Our brave men and women were able to fight because we all knew the people here had stayed behind to keep places like Whitehill safe. This is your victory as much as it is ours.”

The courtyard erupted in cheers in applause.

“I didn’t think I said anything particularly eloquent," Liv remarked to Keri, leaning in toward him to give their words some measure of privacy.

“You just told them we won a war; how you said it doesn’t matter,” he answered her. “Welcome home, Liv.”